conditioning
Americannoun
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conditionings
plural
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Also called operant conditioning, instrumental conditioning. a process of changing behavior by rewarding or punishing a subject each time an action is performed until the subject associates the action with pleasure or distress.
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Also called classical conditioning, Pavlovian conditioning, respondent conditioning. a process in which a stimulus that was previously neutral, as the sound of a bell, comes to evoke a particular response, as salivation, by being repeatedly paired with another stimulus that normally evokes the response, as the taste of food.
noun
adjective
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Origin of conditioning
Example Sentences
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The answer, in the end, was by breaking his lifelong conditioning, contradicting one of the main qualifications of heroic worthiness established by a council of powerful beings most people aren’t even aware exists.
From Salon ● Oct. 5, 2026
O'Hagan's spoke on female strength and conditioning and the impact of the menstrual cycle on athletic performance, while McCool focused on breast and cervical cancer awareness.
From BBC ● Sep. 30, 2026
“I come from Eastern Washington state — it’s a desert,” he says assuringly when I offer to move us to an indoor seat with air conditioning.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
Star running back Jadan Baugh squatted such an astronomical number—600 pounds—that the conditioning staff prohibited him from throwing any more weight on the machine.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
Through it all, I only missed two days in the gym, although I only worked on uneven bars and upper body conditioning until the doctor cleared me to do more.
From "Courage to Soar" by Simone Biles
At both, the luxury treatment begins with a detailed scalp analysis followed by a neck and shoulder massage and repeated shampooings and conditionings.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 1, 2025
If we are to have a more rationalized form of social control, then, it will undoubtedly take into consideration the necessity of forming the socially desirable conditionings of the emotional life.
From Taboo and Genetics A Study of the Biological, Sociological and Psychological Foundation of the Family by Melvin Moses Knight
Francis Galton, pioneer student of the conditionings of human faculty, left an interesting study of the visualising capacity, so far as it could be attacked by the statistical method.
From The Glands Regulating Personality by Louis Berman M.D.
He sensed the change that possessed her, the struggling of new emotions, the shattering of imposed concepts and conditionings and their realigning to shape a new personality, a new person.
From Assignment's End by Roger D. Aycock
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
